The Idea: Alan Chang is not your typical energy executive. A physics graduate who joined Revolut as employee #5, he rose to become its Chief Revenue Officer, earning a reputation for a relentless, "war-time" work ethic. But after helping build a fintech giant, he grew bored of banking and turned his sights to a bigger problem: climate change. He teamed up with Charles Orr, another Revolut alum, and realized the energy grid was stuck in the 1990s - fragmented, middleman-heavy, and expensive. Their thesis was radical: to fix energy, you couldn't just build a shiny app; you had to own the entire stack, from the solar panel in the field to the socket in the wall. They left their millions in unvested stock on the table to build the "Revolut of Energy." This was the start of Fuse.
The Execution:
- January 2022: Alan and Charles incorporate "Tesseract" (later rebranded to Fuse). Unlike typical software startups, they don't just write code, they immediately start scouting land to build their own solar farms, aiming for total vertical integration.
- September 2022: In a move that shocked the European VC ecosystem, they raise a massive $78M Seed round led by Balderton and Lakestar. The pitch is simple but audacious: remove the middlemen to make renewable energy cheaper than fossil fuels.
- July 2023: Fuse officially launches its electricity tariff in the UK. Their "growth hack" is price and speed. By owning the generation assets, they undercut competitors on price, while their app offers a user experience lightyears ahead of legacy utilities.
- Mid-2024: The company scales aggressively, hitting 150,000 households. They deploy the "Revolut Playbook": extreme operational efficiency and a hardcore work culture (hiring only top-tier talent and expecting 14-hour days. Ooft).
- July 2025: Fuse hits Unicorn status ($1B valuation) after a $10M strategic raise. They begin expanding beyond the UK, eyeing Spain and the US.
- December 2025: Just months later, they close a $70M Series B at a staggering $5B valuation. The company reports hitting $400M in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) and becoming cash-flow positive - a rarity for a hyper-growth hardware-software hybrid.
The takeaway? Disruption isn't just about software, it's about ownership. By having the audacity to own the "hard" stuff (infrastructure/power plants) rather than just the "soft" stuff (the app), Fuse proved you can scale a physical utility as fast as a SaaS company if you cut out the middlemen. Legendary founders.